Daily Doc: WLF, May, 1998: Washington Legal Foundation & Tommy Thompson
Daily Doc: Washington Legal Foundation & Tommy Thompson
Title: IN ALL FAIRNESS: A CONSTITUTIONAL TRAGEDY IN THE MAKING
WLF, May, 1998
Bates #: 2060567856
January 12, 2000
In 1994, Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson (incoming president Bush's nominee to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the tobacco control functions of federal government) joined the policy advisory board of an organization called the Washington Legal Foundation, or WLF. WLF receives funding from the Philip Morris tobacco company (PM) and in turn WLF defends PM on its issues. In 1998, the WLF ran this extremely inflammatory, pro-tobacco advertisement in several large papers including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the National Journal, the CongressDaily AM, and others. Easily recongizeable in the article are many of the tobacco industry's arguments (freedom of speech, the Bill of Rights, "slippery slope" arguments about enacting "prohibition" as well as emotion-laden phrases like "anti-tobacco zealots").
In addition to running this type of ad, the WLF has also repeatedly sued government agencies that oversee public health functions, like the Food and Drug Administration and the Enivronmental Protection Agency, who they sued over workplace smoking policies.
Thompson's close linkage with WLF, an organization which has long proven itself powerfully hostile to tobacco control and which clearly opposes public health measures, should be strongly questioned by senators scrutinizing Thompson as a possible head of agencies overseeing tobacco control efforts in the U.S..
CITATION
Title: IN ALL FAIRNESS: A CONSTITUTIONAL TRAGEDY IN THE MAKING
Type of Document: Pamphlet
Author: Washington Legal Foundation
Recipient: N/A
Date: 19980500/E
Site: Tobacco Documents Online http://www.tobaccodocuments.org/ and also on the Philip Morris tobacco document site http://www.pmdocs.com/cgi-bin/rsasearch.asp
Page Count 1
Bates No. 2060567856
URL: (on TDO) http://www.tobaccodocuments.org/view.cfm?docid=2060567856&source=SNAPPM&ShowImages=yes
(on PM site) http://www.pmdocs.com/getallimg.asp?DOCID=2060567856
Litigation Usage: None yet
Search Criteria: "a constitutional tragedy"
QUOTES
I'm fascinated by the new, uniquely American blame and disdain game. Take any disfavored industry, accuse it of harming youth, then demagogue your way to tax heaven on the backs of its customers.
Let me see if I've got the most recent version of this game straight. Anti-smoking zealots in government seek to simultaneously single out and punish the demonized tobacco industry while continuing to collect billions of dollars in tax revenues from tobacco sales, as they have for decades.
Does any of this make sense?
The states have already sued tobacco companies--but maybe they should have named themselves as defendants because of their own profiteering....Someone ought to get these government officials under oath and ask exactly when they first considered smoking addictive and hazardous -- what did they know and when did they know it? Did they really need to wait until they brought tobacco executives in to testify to suddenly discover that smoking isn't healthy?
Now, with classic hypocrisy, we're being told that it's still going to be perfectly acceptable to keep selling these "dangerous" products as long as government can get a big enough piece of the new tax pie. Who's kidding whom? They don't really want "Big Tobacco" or its customers to go away at all. The new smoking control scheme is just public policy pageantry.
The most troubling part of this pageant is the proposed sweeping restrictions on the First Amendment right to advertise. By promoting the single largest suspension of commercial free speech liberties in history, our leaders are convening a constitutional convention without the rest of us.
For that matter, will targeting commercial free speech really work? Consider that marijuana is now one of American's biggest cash crops. Have you seen any billboards or David Brinkley advertisements for it lately? And what sort of troubling precedent would this censorship set? When all the smoke from this back-door prohibition clears, who and what is next? The Big Caffeine merchants at Coca-Cola and Starbucks, whose products and marketing attract kids in droves, should be justifiably jumpy.
This certainly isn't the first time our leaders have insulted Americans' intelligence and thought they could get away with it. But, one of the great things about our democracy is that we give a lot of leeway to regulators, judges, and elected officials, until they suspend the Bill of Rights. I don't always agree with the ACLU, but I sure agree with them and a long line of respected constitutional scholars that these proposals seriously diminish our freedoms.
If we end up with liberty for some and not for all, and we really have liberty for no one. This constitutional mayhem calls for serious debate.
--The Washington Legal Foundation --"effective advocate of free enterprise"
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Anne Landman, Regional Program Coordinator
American Lung Association of Colorado, West Region Office
Grand Junction, CO
(970) 245-2120
afoxland@gj.net
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